About forty years ago, the title "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" belonged to a
book by Pauline Kael, probably the greatest movie critic of her
generation and arguably the most influential movie critic of all time.
In a brief preface to that 1968 book she wrote:

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang
Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the
briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.
This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us
despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more
than this.

When Kael sneered at films for being no more than
sex and violence, she actually meant that films should also be about
original ideas, passionate beliefs and genuine feelings. She felt that
those elements could raise a film to a level beyond the simple entertainment
value of sex and violence, which are the modern equivalent of panem et
circenses. This movie announces boldly with its title that it is
NOT about more than bread and circus games. It goes right for the
basic gut-level appeal of tough guys and sassy dames. Although the
film has a deadly serious message (against child abuse)
hidden inside its clowning, you
can stop reading about this movie and search for another one if you
want intellectual engagement. In fact, if you were to read a plot
summary of this film, you would probably skip it entirely, concluding
that it is yet another contrived private eye thriller which is not
only totally improbable, but far too convoluted for its own good.

And you'd be wrong.

It would certainly be possible to take the plot
summary of this "mismatched buddy" film and make a bad movie from it,
but this isn't that movie because its value derives from elements
other than the plot. In a completely different sense from the argument
made by Kael above, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is far more than just
"kiss kiss bang bang."

Whatever that means.

I guess it means that you can make bad movies from
sex and violence, but you can also make good ones. One way to make a
good one is to realize that there is a certain point at
which the basic fists-and-floozies movie can be turned inward to
parody itself while still living a surface existence as a solid noir
story on its own. Charlie Kaufman pulled that off for his screenplay of
"Adaptation," and the combination of Elmore Leonard and Scott Frank
did it in "Get Shorty." A script of this caliber has the
ability to please those who love pulp cinema as well as those who find
it trashy and lacking in merit. That level of crossover appeal is exactly what writer/director Shane
Black did with this film. It's a noir film as narrated by a petty
thief from Iowa who has never been more than a struggling fringe
player with a humdrum existence in Los Angeles. He is suddenly
surprised to find that a portion of his life has suddenly become
exactly like those improbable "dime novel" detective stories he and
his childhood girlfriend used to read each other as bedtime stories.
Our narrator is not very bright at all, having mastered neither math
nor grammar, but what he lacks in intelligence he more than makes up
in puniness. He spends the entire film getting outsmarted and
outfought by everyone else. Compared to Harry Lockhart, "The Dude"
Lebowski is
a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Batman. Yet Harry presents
himself with such vulnerable, honest, and ingratiating charm that we
immediately tune into him, and treat him as a lovable underdog rather
than a pathetic loser. And he does have some of the characteristics of
a great detective. Like Spade or Marlowe, he has integrity, a highly
developed sense of loyalty, quick hands, and dogged determination -
characteristics which lead us to hope that, like young King Arthur,
Harry may succeed where a stronger and smarter man might fail, and just may pull the
sword from the stone.

The story begins in an aborted toy store burglary.
Harry makes a careless error which gets his partner killed. As he
flees a police pursuit, he takes refuge in what he thinks is an old
warehouse, which turns out to be housing some acting auditions. He
stumbles in, is handed the script, sees that it is about a private eye
who got his own partner killed, and is so touched by the similarity to
his own situation that he breaks down and delivers an unscripted
monologue about the emotions he's feeling. That effusion is so perfect
for the scripted character that he is immediately hailed as the new
Brando, and is assigned to work with a real detective to get a feel
for the mechanics of the business. Enter Gay Perry, the private eye
with an even more private sex life. Perry intends to show Harry how
boring detective work can be, but their collaboration doesn't turn out
to be tedious at all. They stumble into a serpentine murder case
involving power-crazed millionaires and Harry's childhood girlfriend,
the one who used to read detective stories with him. As it turns out,
through the wildest of coincidences, the murderer is also a fan of
those same stories, and thinks like their author.

Is the storyline believable? Not for a minute. Not on
paper. It couldn't be more contrived. The film is even divided into
chapters, and each of them is named after a Raymond Chandler novel! As
often happens in the best pulp fiction, the artificiality never seems
to detract from the film's pleasures. On the screen it is great fun,
and the actors make everything work "in the moment."

There are two main reasons why this movie works so
well.

1. Dialogue. The author is aware of the
first principle of entertainment, which is to avoid boredom at all
costs. Whenever the obscure plot needs to be forwarded, it is done so
with funny lines. Part of the fun stems from the fact that this movie
works a lot like the original Scream, in which the characters knew they
were in a horror movie. These characters know they are in a Raymond
Chandler story, and constantly re-examine what such characters should
do in perilous situations. But that's not the only source of humor.
All of the characters generally engage in impromptu banter which would
make Oscar Wilde and Robin Williams envious. Author Shane Black never
forgets that he is writing an entertainment picture, and he entertains
continuously. And he's damned funny.

2. Robert
Downey Jr. You remember him. When he was still in his mid-twenties, he
played Chaplin so well that he was nominated for an Oscar. Then about
fifteen years of his life seemed to disappear, and as he grew less
dependable, his opportunities came less frequently and in
ever-inferior productions. While his contemporaries like Sean Penn and
Johnny Depp were establishing themselves as great actors, Downey was
pissing away his life. But you know what? He was and still is a great
talent, on the same level as those two guys as an actor, and funnier
than either of them. He just has a talent for turning any line into a
comic gem, and an equally important gift for making even the most
outrageous situation seem perfectly natural. More than any actor I can
think of, even Jimmy Stewart, he has the ability to be our on-screen
alter ego, the everyday guy who is doing and saying what we think we
would do and say in the same situation. In that sense, he is the
ultimate actor for self-referential movies. Imagine if Bob Hope had
had the acting ability of Peter O'Toole and the physical agility of
Doug Fairbanks or Chaplin. That's Downey. The sumbitch should have
been a monster star. It will be interesting to see what the next
decade holds for him. Will he stay on the straight and narrow path and
become one of the ten greatest movie stars of all time, or will he
flame out yet again? My money's on the flame-out, but my heart's
rooting for the guy. Whatever the future holds for him, he certainly
pulled off a beautiful piece of characterization in this film.

Hollywood's decisions sometimes puzzle me. The Clive
Owen thriller Derailed, which was widely dissed by the critics, ended
up on 2400 screens. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is rated high by
critics and audiences by every measurement cited below, has never
expanded beyond 169 screens. In my home town of Austin, a good movie
town, KKBB failed to deliver on the trailer's perfunctory promise to
come soon "to a theater near you." It played on one screen. Nowhere
near me. I realize that Derailed could claim the supposed star appeal of Jennifer Aniston, but I'm still puzzled by the decisions that
let to promoting and distributing the flimsy and familiar Derailed while ignoring
the original and charming Kiss Kiss
Bang Bang. I guess the producers of KKBB should have hired Aniston
for the female lead.

I suppose that part of the
distro decision was related to the fact that KKBB is absolutely NOT
suitable for families or youngsters. I would guess that the MPAA may
even have considered an NC-17. In terms of darkly humorous violence
and extreme language, you might compare it to Pulp Fiction. There are
scenes of extreme violence and torture, including gunfire wounds, a
severed finger, and electric shocks to the genitals. A human corpse is
exploited for laughs. Oh, and the nudity is not bad either! (See
below.)

Given the restricted distro, not many
people got to sample KKBB in theaters, but it's flat-out terrific,
probably my favorite entertainment film of 2005. You'll like
it if you like "mismatched buddy"
humor, and have no problem with the whole Tarantinoesque ambiance of lurid sex,
disrespectful humor, foul
language, and exaggerated violence. I kept dragging people to see it
at that one movie theater in Austin, and everyone loved it. Of course,
I selected those people carefully. You might want to avoid
recommending it to your church group.

DVD INFO

No info available yet

NUDITY REPORT

Michelle Monaghan appears topless
in a lengthy scene in which she climbs into bed wearing only a
thong.

Shannyn Sossamon shows her
breasts in a sex scene with ... (wait for it) ... Corbin Bernsen,
but she's wearing a blindfold, so it may be a double. Her crotch
is exposed in another scene, but that is a close-up, and
therefore could also be a double.

Tanja Reichert is topless in a
brief snippet from a faux monster movie.

Several other women show their
breasts in raunchy action at a club and a private party.

The
Critics Vote ...

Super-panel consensus: three out of four
stars. James Berardinelli 3/4, Roger Ebert 2.5/4,
Entertainment Weekly A-

Box Office Mojo. It was budgeted at $15
million for production, but has so far not reached more than
169 theaters.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, it's
a B-, a good
genre film and a good genre parody at the same time, worthy to
be mentioned in the same breath as Get Shorty!, Pulp Fiction, and Adaptation.